Edgar Allan Poe

Description

"Edgar Allan Poe, the son of a Baltimore gentleman and an actress, Elizabeth Arnold, was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. He was left an orphan when three years old, and was adopted by a wealthy merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who gave him his own name for a middle name. Poe was well educated by his foster father and sent to the University of Virginia, but he was an ungovernable, wayward youth, keenly intellectual, brilliant, and restless. He ran into debt, enlisted in the army under an assumed name, published a small volume of poems, was for a while at West Point, and finally, thrown on his own resources, became editor of one magazine after another, married a mere girl, and came under the strong sane influence of her mother. He died finally in poverty and degradation, October 8, 1849, but he had written poems and tales which the world will not let die."—Scudder, 1897